Previewing Fin lets you safely see your setup in real time, so you can ask Fin questions, review its reasoning, and confirm that your configurations work as expected.
Use the Preview panel while training Fin to observe how it applies your content, guidance, attributes, procedures, escalation rules, and deployment settings before going live.
Understanding the preview panel
The Preview panel is your main tool for manual, in-context testing. You’ll find it throughout Fin’s training areas — including Content, Guidance, Attributes, Escalation and Procedures — where you can experiment with updates without impacting customers.
Tip: You can also send Fin images or screenshots through this preview to see how Fin Vision recognizes these and provides support.
Preview as a specific user or audience
At the top of the Preview panel, you’ll see the Testing as dropdown. This lets you choose if Fin should simulate a specific user or audience during your test.
Note: You need "Can access people, companies, and account lists" and "Can access lead and user profile pages" permissions are required to preview guidance as a specific user in Fin.
User or lead: Preview as a specific user or lead, with access to all relevant content, guidance, and automations (including tasks, data connectors, and custom answers). If you choose User or lead, you’ll be able to configure additional preview settings:
Select which user or lead you want to test as.
Choose to use sample data or access real user data for connected integrations.
Select a brand to preview content and guidance that are brand-specific.
Choose a language for testing multilingual experiences.
Audience: Test Fin as audience(s) you've configured for Fin, with audience-specific content, guidance, data, and tasks.
Preview user (default): Preview with all live content, guidance, data, and tasks enabled, without impersonating a specific customer.
Note: Audience filtering for escalation rules and escalation guidance does not apply when using the Audience or Preview user options. In these modes, all live escalation rules and escalation guidance will fire regardless of audience settings. To validate audience-targeted escalation behavior, use the User or lead option and select a specific user who matches the relevant audience.
Previewing as a specific audience also allows you to safely validate answers for internal testers before making them available to customers:
Click New audience and name it something like Internal testers.
Define your audience rules—for example, Email contains @yourcompany.com—then click Save.
Apply this audience to your content/data/guidance/task Fin audience.
Then go to Fin AI Agent Train > Content, open the Preview panel, and preview as a user who matches your Internal testers audience.
Once you’ve confirmed everything works correctly, update or remove the internal audience to set it live for customers.
Tip: Using an unlisted public article (not in your Help Center) and applying an internal audience is a safe way to validate how Fin interprets new content before making it available to customers.
Choose a preview language
Click the settings icon in the preview to choose one of your supported languages and see how Fin responds in that language. If you select Auto, Fin will automatically detect the language of your question.
Customer view and event logs
The preview panel shows two tabs:
Customer view shows what the customer will see.
Event log shows Fin’s reasoning process, including which content, data, etc. it used to generate its response.
The Customer view shows you how this conversation would appear in the Messenger. | The Event log will show any conversation events that are happening in the background, e.g. any Fin personality, Guidance, Tasks, etc. that Fin has applied to the conversation. |
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You can also switch between the Chat and Email preview to see how Fin answers over email.
Notes:
All conversations created in Preview will appear in your inbox. These test conversations are excluded from reporting.
You can only switch between the two preview view types after you've started a conversation, as the "Show events" button only pops up after.
Where to use the preview panel
You’ll find the Preview panel in all of Fin AI Agent’s training settings, where you can view how specific features and configurations will appear to customers.
Preview Fin content
In Fin AI Agent > Train > Content, you can use the Preview panel to ask Fin questions and confirm it’s pulling answers from the right sources. This helps you validate that Fin’s responses match your support content, guidance, and connected data.
Preview Fin Guidance
In Fin AI Agent > Train > Guidance you can create or edit guidance, use the Preview panel to ask Fin questions and check how your updates are applied. When you’re satisfied with the results, click Save and Enable to make your guidance live.
Note: All guidance types—draft, paused, and live—are included in preview testing. You don’t need to save or enable guidance to test it.
Preview Fin Attributes
In Fin AI Agent > Train > Attributes use the Preview panel to:
Test Fin Attribute values against example customer messages.
Check how accurately Fin applies the right value.
Iterate on names and descriptions before enabling.
Preview Escalation Rules and Escalation Guidance
In Fin AI Agent > Train > Escalation you can preview both Fin’s Escalation Rules and Escalation Guidance safely before they affect real customers.
Preview a new Escalation Rule
Navigate to Fin AI Agent > Train > Escalation.
Add a condition to the Escalation Rule that targets your email (e.g., Email contains @yourcompany.com).
Click Save and Enable.
Go to the Preview window on the right and set the Testing as user to an email that matches your condition (e.g., your-email@yourcompany.com).
Type a message that should trigger the rule and check the Event log tab. You'll see a confirmation that your rule was correctly followed.
Once you've confirmed it works, you can remove the email condition to activate the rule for customers.
Preview new Escalation Guidance
Click New audience and name it something like Internal testers.
Define audience rules (for example, Email contains @yourcompany.com), then click Save.
Then go to Fin AI Agent > Train > Escalation and apply this audience to your Escalation Guidance.
In Preview, test as a user who matches that internal audience.
Once you've confirmed it works, you can update the audience condition to activate the escalation guidance for customers.
Preview Fin Procedures
In Fin AI Agent > Train > Procedures you can use the Preview button in the top right to see how the procedure will trigger, review Fin’s process, and view the output your customers will receive.
Tip: Previewing procedures is helpful for manual, end-to-end testing as it creates a preview conversation in the inbox where other follow-up actions or automations will be applied so you can preview the customer and teammate experience. You can use Simulations to test a procedure without creating a conversation.
Important: Preview limitations for procedures
Audience filters are not enforced: When testing a procedure gated to a specific audience, the procedure will trigger regardless of whether the user you're testing as belongs to that audience. To accurately test audience filters, you must test this live with the procedure gated to a test user.
Email procedures must be live: Email procedures must be set live before they can be triggered in preview. A draft email procedure won't trigger.
Channel audience doesn't apply to the default preview user: When testing an email procedure via preview using the default preview user, the channel audience filter is not applied — for example, a web procedure may trigger even when testing from email. This filter is respected if you simulate an actual user in the workspace.
Preview data connectors
When previewing Fin with data connectors, there are a few important behaviours to be aware of.
Important: Preview limitations for data connectors
Testing as the default preview user always uses sample data: No live API calls are made when testing as the default preview user. The only way to trigger a real API call is to test as a specific user in the workspace and select the option to access and update real data in the preview settings.
Data connectors must be live: A data connector must be set live before it can be triggered in preview. Draft connectors won't fire.
Preview in Deploy
Even if Fin is not yet deployed, you can preview the customer experience from Fin AI Agent > Deploy > Chat in the Preview section.
To preview Fin over email, go to Fin AI Agent > Deploy > Email and use the interactive Email Preview panel.
The Email Preview shows a threaded conversation view, just like a real email inbox, so you can see exactly how your customers will experience Fin's replies, including multi-turn exchanges where Fin reads and responds to follow-up messages in the same thread.
To test as a specific customer identity, use the Testing as dropdown at the top of the preview. Select User or lead to impersonate a real user or lead, or choose Preview user to test with all live content, guidance, and tasks enabled without impersonating a specific customer. This lets you validate how Fin responds to different customer types before going live.
Test using your email provider
The Test using your email provider option lets you send real emails to a dedicated test address and preview Fin's responses directly in your actual email client. To use it, go to Fin AI Agent > Deploy > Email and find your unique test address in the Preview > Settings section.
Send an email to that address to trigger Fin and see the response exactly as a customer would. Email preview using your email provider is only available to teammates sending emails from their own Intercom email address.
Tip: Use the Email Preview to test multi-turn conversations end-to-end — send a follow-up reply and confirm Fin reads the full thread context before responding. Previewing does not require Fin to be set live and does not incur charges.
To preview advanced Fin setup through workflows you would use the workflow preview itself. Learn more about previewing workflows.
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